


“From Siddhartha to Sherlock Holmes.”

by AriadneVenegas



Series: Watson woes july daily drabble challenge [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen, John in Afghanistan, John's Childhood, John's mother was almost a hippie, M/M, mention of torture none graphic or descriptive in any way, talking on religious topics in this case Buddhism by a none religious character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneVenegas/pseuds/AriadneVenegas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mother read him many Hindu and other books when he was little and one he never thought would be of some use to him was the life of Siddhartha Buddah, and not to find enlightenment but to find Sherlock Holmes.</p><p> </p><p>This is a companion and prequel for the drabble <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/885444"> “From Gods, Heroes and Pirates.” </a></p>
            </blockquote>





	“From Siddhartha to Sherlock Holmes.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes:** watsons_woes Prompt #26:  
>  The golden mean: the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.
> 
>  
> 
>  **Beta:** Betaed by my amazing friend MildredandBobbin.

“If you hold the string too tight it will break, if you hold it too loose it will make no sound.”  
‘That what the maker of an instrument said to his apprentice.’

::::::::::

One of the many books his mother had read him as a child was the story of Buddha. How a Prince with a beautiful kingdom and wife who didn't know about loss, old age or suffering, felt like a prisoner in his palace and finally upon the discovery of the facts of life and that his just born child would grow old, get sick and die, and he could experience suffering. He left his riches to learn how to end suffering and death.

 

So he learnt to meditate and went to the woods with the ascetics and lived for six years only on a grain of rice, the rain which fell over him, some leaves and a nut a day -John as a boy had his doubts as to how someone could live on that for six years, but the story was that way. 

 

Finally the Prince knew this way didn't help him to reach the solution to end the suffering or to defeat death. So he accepted the offerings of food from the village girls and started to build his strength, and walk again in the world as a monk in the middle ground; not a rich prince, but not a live cadaver. He needed to renounce the things of the world but he still needed to live in it, meditating, and looking for enlightenment, until he finally reached the banyan tree were he decided would be the place where he would meditate until he reached enlightenment. And he did conquering the evil of illusion and understanding the way of the law of cause and effect, and the duty each and everybody had to accomplish in their lives.

 

For John all of these had been stories his mother had told him, he told him a lot of them because she was almost a hippie so she had strayed in and out of different cults and religions for greater part from the 60’s through the 80’s, She was fan of the Beatles too. Obviously she was British so she never departed to a hippie community or really went to India. And she married young to know firsthand about sex because her parents would not let her know about it. So she married a soldier, maybe she thought she could change him, or maybe she found him handsome, John didn't know.

 

John never thought too much about the prince Siddhartha after he'd grew up, less after he entered the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. But being in the army made you know a lot about having and not in every sense of the word.

 

John's life changed and he became part of a big family rich in friendship, camaraderie, and belonging. One where John felt needed and he could protect and fight among these people for the freedom of others, they would eliminate evil and save the world. He was a warrior his duty was protect and fight for others, and he was a doctor, even if he wasn't there in that capacity he would do everything in his power to care for his new family. He felt for a long time in a Palace of riches, with everyday a new adventure, with laughs and learning new things every day.

 

But John was in a war and the war took away all you love. Some days people died and he could help it, and John started to think a lot on the ascetics when he was in the scalding sand in the unforgivable sun, without water and sometimes without food.

He thought about Buddahs’ life and how he detached himself from his bodily suffering when John himself was been tortured by the enemy trying to think about his mother stories about heroes and gods and not in the way his body ached and what his torturers were saying to him.

 

John thought about him when John's men died before his eyes and there was nothing he could do to save them all. Especially when he tried to save little Steve's leg and he was shot. 

 

In that moment John felt detached from his body, he could see the sand, the blood and the death and he felt nothing, because he was sure he was dead too.

 

But he heard a voice:   
“If you hold the string too tight it will break, if you hold it too loose it will make no sound.”

 

And when he turned about to the world again he was alive, but he would have no life as he knew it anymore.

 

He wandered in a London that it was not his own and forgot all about detachment and turned himself to suffering he had lost his life; and he was nothing now.

 

Who was a warrior who had nothing to protect and nothing to fight for, that was not his duty?

He knew he could be a doctor and care for people but he was not only a doctor, and no one wanted a broken person, a person with no soul.

 

Finally John heard a melody, a violin melody. Remembering his feverish dream in Afghanistan he followed and found Sherlock Holmes and he was perfect.


End file.
